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Department of Education 

FOR THE 

United States Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900 



MONOGRAPHS ON EDUCATION 



UNITED STATES 

EDITED BY 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 
Professor of Philosophy and Education in Columbia University, New York 



8 

THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 



B. A. HINSDALE 

Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan 



This Monograph is contributed to the United States Educational Exhibit bv tuE 

State of New York 



Department of- Education 

FOR THE 

United States Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900 

Director 
HOWARD J. ROGERS. Albany, N. Y. 



MONOGRAPHS 



ON 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

EDITED BY 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

Professor of Philosojihy and Education in Columbia University, New York 



1 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION — 

Andrew Sloan Draper, President of the University of Illinois , Cham- 
paign, Illinois 

2 KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION — SuSAN E. Blow, Cazenovia, New 

York 

3 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION — William T. Harris, United States 

Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C. 

4 SECONDARY EDUCATION — Elmer Ellsworth Brown, Professor 

of Education in the University of California, Berkeley, California 

5 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE — Andrew Fleming West, Professor of 

Latin in Princeton University, Princeton, New fersey 

6 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY— Edward Delay an Perry, /ay 

Professor of Greek in Columbia University, New York 

7 EDUCATION OF WOMEN — M. Carey Thomas, President of Bryn 

Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 

8 TRAINING OF TEACHERS — B. A. Hinsdale, Professor of the Science 

and Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 
Michigan 

9 SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE AND HYGIENE — Gilbert B. Morrison, 

Principal of the Manual Training High School, Kansas City, Missouri 
10 PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION— James Russell Parsons, Director of 
the College and High School Departments, University of the State of 
New York, Albany, New York 
u SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION — 
T. C. Mendenhall, President of the Technological Institute, Worces- 
ter, Massachusetts 

12 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION — Charles W. Dabney, President 

of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 

13 COMMERCIAL EDUCATION — Edmund J. James, Professor of Public 

Administration in the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 

14 ART AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION — Isaac Edwards Clarke, 

Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C. 

15 EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES — Edward Ellis Allen, Principal of 

the Pennsylvattia In^stitution for the Instruction of the Blind, Over- 
brook, Pennsylvania 

16 SUMMER SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITY EXTENSION — Herbert B. 

Adams, Professor of American and Institutional History in the fohns 
Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 

17 SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES AND. ASSOCIATIONS —James McKeen 

Cattell, Professor of Psychology in Columbia University, New York 
r8 EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO — Booker T. Washington, Pr/««)Jfl:/ 

of the Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama 
19 EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN— William N. Hailmann, Superin- 
tendent of Schools, Dayton, Ohio 



Department of Education 

FOR THE 

United States Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900 



MONOGRAPHS ON EDUCATION 



UNITKD STATKS 

edited by 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 
Professor of Philosophy and Education in Columbia University, New York 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 



B. A. HINSDALE 
Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan 



This Monograph is contributed to the United States Educational Exhibit by the 

State of New Yukk 



MS 



Copyright by 
J. B. LYON COMPANY 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 



The agencies of an institutional character for training 
teachers in the United States are the following: Normal 
schools and colleges, teachers' training classes, teachers' 
institutes, summer schools, university extension lectures, 
teachers' reading circles, chairs of education in colleges and 
universities, and teachers' colleges. None of these agencies 
go far back in our history ; all of them, on the contrary, 
sprang directly or indirectly out of the educational revival 
that began to show marked power in the most progressive 
countries early in the present century. We shall under- 
stand the origin and development of these agencies the 
better if we first glance at the preparation of teachers in the 
period preceding this revival. 

The first thing to be considered is the fact that the train- 
ing of teachers, as the phrase is now understood, had pre- 
viously been wholly neglected throughout the country. 
Teachers had no other preparation for their work than their 
natural aptitude for the art, their knowledge of the subjects 
which they taught, and such practical lessons as they learned 
in their school rooms. As respects their academic prepa- 
ration, they presented, as a class, a very motley appearance, 
as a cursory view of the schools of the country will abun- 
dantly show. 

New England was much better supplied with schools of ^ 
all kinds than any other section of the country. Here were 
found four of the nine colleges that existed at the time of 
the revolutionary war ; here permanent grammar schools 
and academies existed in larger numbers than elsewhere ; 
and here were the only systems of public schools that had 
been founded. The teacher was always highly respected by 
the Puritans : but some of the accounts of teachers and 



4, THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [3G2 

schools that have come down to us bear a striking resem- 
blance to the descriptions of the state of education existing 
in Switzerland and France in the youth of Pestalozzi. In 
the early time we read of one town, for example, that 
required its schoolmaster to perform the following duties in 
addition to taking charge of the school : to act as court 
messenger, to serve summonses, to conduct certain ceremo- 
nial services of the church, to lead the Sunday choir, to ring 
the bell for public worship, to dig graves, and to perform 
other occasional duties.' Matters improved as time went 
on, but Horace Mann wrote of Massachusetts as late as 
1837 : " Engaged in the common schools of the state there 
are now, out of the city of Boston, but a few more than a 
hundred male teachers who devote themselves to teaching 
as a regular profession. The number of females is a little, 
though not materially, larger. Very few even of these have 
ever had any special training for their vocation. The rest 
are generally young persons, taken from agricultural or 
mechanical employment, which have no tendency to qualify 
them for the difficult station ; or they are undergraduates of 
our colleges, some of whom, there is reason to suspect, think 
more of what they are to receive at the end of the stipulated 
term, than what they are to impart during its continuance."^ 
The winter schools were taught by men, the summer schools 
by women, the men being much the better fitted for the 
ofifice of instruction. 

In the middle states education had never taken on a 
strong institutional form. The four colleges of that section 
— •Philadelphia, New Jersey, Queen's and King's — were 
much younger and weaker than Harvard and Yale ; acade- 
mies and grammar schools were less firmly established than 
east of the Hudson river, while common schools were wholly 
of a voluntary or parochial character. Private schools and 
domestic instruction were mainly relied on. The old Dutch 
schoolmasters of the Hudson and the Delaware performed 

* Boone, R. G. Education in the United States, p. 12. 
*Life and Works of Horace Mann, vol. II, p. 425. 



363] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 5 

quite as many offices as ever the New England schoolmas- 
ters performed. They were forereaders and foresingers in 
the churches, comforters of the sick, and church clerks, not 
to mention other services, as well as pedagogues.' Presi- 
dent Dwight, of Yale college, visiting the city of New 
York early in this century, gives this account of the majority 
of the schools that he found there : " An individual, some- 
times a liberally educated student, having obtained the 
proper recommendations, offers himself to some of the 
inhabitants as a schoolmaster. If he is approved and pro- 
cures a competent number of subscribers, he hires a room 
and commences the business of instruction. Sometimes he 
meets with little, and sometimes with much encourage- 
ment."^ And so it was, for the most part, throughout the 
middle states. 

At the south schools were still less firmly rooted. Here 
was found, before the revolutionary war, but a single col- 
lege, William and Mary, and academies of a permanent 
character were infrequent. In the later colonial days, and 
perhaps afterwards, it was common for southern gentlemen 
to send abroad for university educated men, who were duly 
installed as teachers in their families. Thus George Mason, 
the distinguished Virginia statesman of the revolutionary 
era, sent to Scotland for two teachers in succession for his 
sons.3 At an earlier time it was still more common in the 
southern states for heads of families to buy teachers in the 
market as the Romans bought them in the days of Cicero ; 
such teachers being commonly redemptioners, men who had 
sold their services for a term of years to a merchant or ship- 
master in payment for their transportation to America, but 
sometimes, also, convicts who had been expatriated. It was 
common, too, at the south, and in a less degree in the mid- 
dle states, for leading families to send their sons abroad to 

^ History of the school of the collegiate reformed Dutch church in the city of 
New York, etc. H. W. Dunshee, New York, 1883,/^^^?^. 

* Travels in New England and New York, 4 vols. London, 1823, vol. IV, p. 443. 

»The Life of George Mason, etc. Kate Mason Rowland, N. Y. London, 1892, 
vol. I, pp. 96, 97. 



6 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [364 

be educated. Thus the father and two elder brothers of 
Washington were sent to Appleby school in England. 
Foreign trained teachers were much more common at the 
south than at the north. Andrew Bell, author of the Mad- 
ras system of education, taught in Virginia through the 
period of the revolutionary war.' The Scotch-Irish race, 
both in and out of the country, furnished a large number of 
teachers, some of whom were as vagrant in their habits as 
the wandering scholars of the sixteenth century. " The 
whole southern country," writes one who has carefully studied 
the subject, "was opened to the wandering teachers, all the 
way from an educational tramp and a drunken importation 
from a British university, to now and then, probably, a com- 
petent teacher." Such men as these were met with every- 
where, but more commonly at the south and west. 

Following the revolution, as the different sections of the 
union became more closely knit together. New England, 
which had a surplus of teachers, such as they were, began to 
send her overplus beyond her borders. Other states at the 
north followed her example. Probably the practice ante- 
dated the war ; but now the " Yankee " schoolmaster became 
better known in the south and west than ever the Scotch 
professor had been known in continental countries in the 
middle ages. It may be worth recalling that it was one 
of these New England schoolmasters, Eli Whitney, who 
invented the cotton gin, which gave such an impulse to 
cotton production and cotton manufacture. William Ellery 
Channing taught as a private instructor in Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, in 1 798-1 800; William H. Seward taught part of the 
year 1819 in Georgia ; Salmon P. Chase carried on his select 
classical seminary in Washington in 1827-28, while studying 
law in the office of William Wirt ; and at a later day James 
G. Blaine taught for a time in the Western Military institute 
at the Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky. Women, as well as 
men, went to the south to teach. Probably most of these 

' The Life of Rev. Andrew Bell, etc. By Robert Southey, London, 1844, vol. 
I, chap. II. 



365] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS / 

teachers returned north again after a period of service ; but 
some remained and became identified with the country. 
Thus the gentleman quoted from above testifies: "In my 
wanderings through the older Atlantic states, I have come 
upon a good many old men and women who left New 
England as teachers and married and settled among the 
people." ' It must be added that at the south, and in the 
middle states in less degree, men of superior education 
looked with little favor upon teaching as a vocation, being 
more interested in the professions or in public life. 

The general situation in the first quarter of the present 
century may be summed up as follows : The teachers of the 
best academies, grammar schools, and select schools were 
educated men, a large majority of them trained in the col- 
leges of the country, but some in the universities of the old 
world, particularly of England and of Scotland. Not unfre- 
quently these teachers were ministers of religion actually in 
charge of parishes or churches. In fact, it had always been 
common for ministers to teach, if not formal schools, then 
private pupils in their own studies. Next to this group the 
best educated teachers, as a class, were college students and 
young men preparing for professional life — the law, medicine, 
or the ministry — who had resorted to teaching for the time as 
a means of supplying themselves with needed funds. John 
Adams, after graduating from Harvard college in 1755, 
taught for a time in the grammar school at Worcester, Mas- 
sachusetts. Some of these persons, by reason of aptitude, 
enthusiasm, and scholarly attainments, were excellent teach- 
ers. The third group to be mentioned was composed of 
persons who had studied in the academies and grammar and 
select schools but had not attended institutions of a higher 
grade. These were found not only in the elementary schools 
but in the grammar schools and academies themselves. 
Schools of this grade, it may be explained, performed a 
double function ; they sent young men to the colleges, but 
a much larger number directly into practical life. Much of 

* Dr. A. D. Mayo, in private letter. 



8 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [366 

the instruction that they furnished, especially the inferior 
schools, was of a strictly elementary character. The fourth 
group, found in the common schools, were fitted, so far as 
they were fitted at all, some in the grammar school and 
academies, but many more in just such schools as they taught 
themselves. Sometimes, however, a college student, or even 
graduate, was found in one of the common schools. 

In America, as in Europe, the education of women had 
been greatly neglected. In the first half of the eighteenth 
century fewer than forty per cent of the women of New 
England who signed legal papers wrote their names ; the 
others made their mark.' Mrs. John Adams, writing of the 
middle of the century, said female education in the best 
families went no further than writing and arithmetic ; in 
some few and rare instances music and dancing. It was 
fashionable, she said also, to ridicule female learning,'' 
Girls were not admitted to the public schools of Boston until 
1769. When the first quarter of this century was well 
turned some change for the better was apparent ; but even 
then, there were slight manifestations of that splendid out- 
burst of interest in women's education which was carried in 
the bosom of the great democratic movement. All this was 
the more unfortunate because a large proportion of the teach- 
ers, at least in the northern states, were women, who were, 
generally speaking, grossly incompetent and miserably paid. 

Still it must not be supposed that, down to the educational 
revival, no attention was given to the qualification and 
preparation of teachers. That were a great mistake ; the 
maintenance of colleges and academies was often advocated 
on the ground that they would furnish teachers for the com- 
mon schools. Dr. Franklin, for example, in urging the 
claims of the Academy of Philadelphia, now the University 
of Pennsylvania, remarked upon the great need of school- 

* The Evolution of the Massachusetts public school system, G. H. Martin, New 
York, 1894, p. 75. 

*The Familiar letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams during the 
revolution, with a memoir of Mrs. Adams by Charles Francis Adams. New 
York, 1876, pp. xxi, 339. 



367] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 9 

masters,, and said the academy would be able to furnish 
teachers of good morals well prepared to teach children 
reading, writing, arithmetic, and the grammar of their 
mother tongue/ But nothing was said or done, so far as 
known, relative to instructing prospective teachers in the 
science and the art of teaching. 

It is clear, therefore, that, at the opening of this century, 
there was urgent need of a general educational revival 
throughout the country, and particularly of a revival, or cre- 
ation, of interest in the training of teachers. Both of these 
needs were the more pressing because population was largely 
increasing, owing partly to its growing density in the old 
states, but more to its rapid extension into the new regions 
of the west. There was, in fact, no other part of the union 
where the schoolmaster so much needed to be abroad as on 
the western frontiers. 

In fact, the two elements that have just been mentioned 
could not be separated. In America, as in Europe, the 
demand for better teachers was a marked feature of the 
great democratic movement towards popular education ; per- 
haps it may be called the feature of this movement. Early 
in this century calls began to be heard in various parts of 
the United States, at first in slow and then in rapid suc- 
cession. These calls were not made according to a pro- 
gram ; there was no central propaganda ; in fact, there 
was little direct connection between the early discussions 
and efforts to do something in different parts of the country. 
On the other hand, these discussions and efforts sprang 
from the forces or causes that produced the great educa- 
tional uprising in this country and in other countries. Men 
will differ as to the relative power of these forces, or perhaps 
even as to the number ; but the best judges, it is believed, 
will hardly dispute the assertion that, in America at least, 
the democratic spirit was the most far reaching and effica- 
cious of such causes. " Schools must be provided for the 

' History of education in Pennsylvania, etc. J. P. Wickersham, Lancaster, Pa., 
1886, p. 606. 



lO THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [368 

people ", " the property of the state must educate the youth 
of the state ", " the schools must have better teachers ", 
became national watchwords.' 



I NORMAL SCHOOLS 

The highly mechanical method of teaching that bears the 
names of Bell and Lancaster, called also mutual and moni- 
torial instruction, demanded much skill in its conductors. 
Among other places, this method took root in the city of 
Philadelphia, and there, in 1818, it called into existence the 
model school, which was, no doubt, the first school estab- 
lished in the country for the training of teachers ; it did not, 
however, outlive the movement of which it was a part. 

The first permanent normal schools were the three founded 
at Lexington, Barrie, and Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 
1839-40. They were an outgrowth of the interest in popu- 
lar education and especially of interest in schools for pre- 
paring common school teachers, which had been increasing 
for years, and particularly after German influence began to 
be felt upon American education, that is, about 1820. These 
primitive schools were in all respects on a small scale — 
studies, teachers and pupils. Candidates to be admitted 
were required to be, if males, seventeen years old, if females, 
sixteen years. They were required to declare an intention 
to become school teachers ; they also took an entrance 
examination, and submitted evidence of intellectual capacity 
and moral character. The minimum term of study was 
fixed at one year, and at its expiration the pupil, if deserv- 
ing, was promised a certificate of qualification. The official 
course of study, prepared by the state board of education, 
said the studies first to be attended to should be those which 
the law required to be taught in the district schools, viz.: 

^ The writer has given a much fuller account of the state of schools in the 
United States previous to 1837 in his vcork entitled " Horace Mann and the com- 
mon school revival in the United States." New York, 1898, chaps. I, II. See 
also chapters on various aspects of our educational history by Dr. A. D. Mayo, in 
the reports of the commissioner of education, 1895, 1896, 1897. Also chap. XXIX 
of the last named report. 



369] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS II 

orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography 
and arithmetic. When these were thoroughly mastered, 
those of a higher order might be progressively taken. Per- 
sons wishing to remain at the school more than one year, in 
order to increase their qualifications for teaching a public 
school, might do so, having first obtained the consent of 
the principal ; and to meet their needs, a further course of 
study was marked out. The whole course, properly arranged, 
was as follows : 

(i) Orthography, reading, grammar, composition and 
rhetoric, logic ; (2) writing, drawing ; (3) arithmetic, men- 
tal and written, algebra, geometry, bookkeeping, navigation, 
surveying ; (4) geography, ancient and modern, with chro- 
nology, statistics, and general history ; (5) physiology ; (6) 
mental philosophy ; (7) music ; (8) constitution and history 
of Massachusetts and of the United States ; (9) natural 
philosophy and astronomy ; (10) natural history; (11) the 
principles of piety and morality common to all sects of 
Christians; (12) the science and art of teaching, with refer- 
ence to all the above named studies. A portion of the 
Scriptures should be read daily in every normal school. 

A selection from the above studies should be made by 
those who were to remain at the school but one year, accord- 
ing to the particular kind of school it might be their inten- 
tion to teach. To each normal school an experimental or 
model school was attached, where the pupils could reduce to 
practice the knowledge that they acquired of the science and 
art of teaching. Every school was put in the immediate 
charge of a principal aided by needed assistants.^ 

Such was the program. Perhaps it is to-day most interest- 
ing when viewed as a gauge of the time, or as a base line 
from which to measure progress. 

These primitive schools were the joint product of private 
and public liberality ; both citizens and the legislature 
shared in founding them ; moreover, they were an experi- 

' The Common school journal, edited by Horace Mann, secretary of the Massa- 
chusetts board of education, vol, I, pp. 32-38. 



12 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [370 

ment, the legislature refusing at first to commit itself to 
their maintenance beyond the period of three years ; but 
they so commended themselves to the public that they were 
soon regularly incorporated into the state system of public 
instruction. Furthermore, not only have these schools 
greatly grown, in number of pupils and teachers, in appli- 
ances and breadth of studies, and in influence, but others 
have been added to the list until Massachusetts has now 
nine state normal schools. 

The northern and western states have generally adopted 
the normal school idea. In the v/est they spring out of the 
soil and grow up side by side with the other institutions of 
civil society. Nor is this all. At the close of the civil war 
there was not a singfle normal school in the southern states ; 
since that time, however, they have been generally intro- 
duced as an indispensable feature of the common school 
system. The places and times at which some of the leading 
schools were established will illustrate the progress of the 
movement. 

Albany, N. Y., 1844. Framington, Maine, 1864. 

New Britain, Connecticut, 1850. Winona, Minnesota, 1864, 
Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1852. Chicago (Cook county). 111., 

Boston, Massachusetts, 1852. 1867. 

Normal, IlHnois, 1857. Plattville, Wisconsin, 1866. 

Millersville, Pennsylvania, 1859. Nashville, Tennessee, 1875. 
Oswego, New York, i860. Cedar Falls, Iowa, 1876. 

Emporia, Kansas, 1864. Terre Haute, Indiana, 1870. 

New York now has twelve public normal schools, Penn- 
sylvania thirteen, Massachusetts nine. West Virginia, North 
Carolina, Missouri, and Wisconsin seven each. No other 
state has more than six, and a few have none. Ohio, how- 
ever, is the only great state that has no state normal school. 

Perhaps no school in this list has exerted a greater influ- 
ence than the Oswego school. This influence has been 
largely due to the practical application that was here made 
of Pestalozzian ideas and methods, and to the great ability 
and elevation of character of its founder, Dr. E. A. Sheldon. 



Sy^^J THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 1 3 

This development has been due partly to the quickening 
example of Massachusetts, but far more to the general preva- 
lence of the same causes that acted in that state. A high 
educational authority has said that " all normal school work 
in the country follows substantially one tradition, and this 
* * * traces back to the course laid down at Lexingfton 
in 1839."' There is truth in this view, but the operation of 
the same general causes was, no doubt, a more powerful 
factor than direct imitation. 

We come now to the question, What and how much are 
the students in the normal schools doing ? Only a general 
answer can be given. 

Candidates for admission to the Massachusetts schools 
must be graduates of approved high schools, or must have 
received an equivalent education. The general two years' 
course desiofned for intendinof teachers below the higfh school 
comprises, (i) psychology, history of education, principles 
of education, methods of instruction and discipline, school 
organization, and the laws of Massachusetts ; (2) methods 
of teaching English, mathematics, science, vocal music, 
physical culture, and manual training ; (3) observation in 
the model school and in other public schools. The Bridge- 
water school has a regular four years' course embracing, in 
addition to the foregoing studies, work of a more academic 
character, as instruction in Latin and French, Greek and 
German, English literature, history, etc. This course looks 
to the preparation of grammar school principals and a grade 
of high school teachers. Bridgewater also offers a three 
years' course, a cross between the other two, while provision 
is also made for advanced instruction for college graduates 
and other approved candidates in all the schools. Diplomas 
are given to graduates from all courses."* 

' Dr. W. T. Harris, oration delivered at Framingham, Mass., 1888. See Pro- 
ceedings of the semi-centennial celebration of the founding of state normal 
schools in this country. 

'See Sixty-second annual report of the board of education, Massachusetts, 
1897-98, passim,- also reports of the various normal schools, particularly that of 
the school at Bridgewater for 1898-99. 



14 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [372 

The Other state normal schools, while conforming in the 
main to the Massachusetts type, present numerous variations. 
The common standard for admission is not as high by at 
least two years of high school study. Often, however, there 
will be found a greater variety of instruction than the Mass- 
achusetts schools furnish, and partly for the very reason 
that the standard is not as high. On the whole, for some 
years past there has been a marked tendency to raise the 
standard of admission and to strengthen and diversify courses 
of study. Advanced courses for normal school graduates 
and other candidates having an equivalent education are 
well nigh universal. Furthermore, the best schools in their 
best courses give an amount of instruction that will carry 
the student nearly, if not quite, to the middle of a good 
college course. Naturally, therefore, many students pass 
from the normal schools to the colleges and universities. 
Special courses for college graduates are often met with, 
designed to give, in a single year, a professional preparation 
for teaching. 

Some schools have assumed the higher name of college, 
in connection with the assumption of some higher function. 
Thus, the Michigan state normal college gives the degree 
of bachelor of pedagogics to students who complete satis- 
factorily its four years' course of study. It also confers the 
corresponding master's degree upon those bachelors who 
comply with some further conditions, none of which, how- 
ever, involve the element of residence. 

The Normal college of the city of New York, which has 
as its main function the training of teachers for the schools 
of that city, offers two main courses of instruction, the nor- 
mal course of four years and the academic course of five 
years. A special diploma is granted to those students who 
complete the normal course ; moreover, such graduates may 
obtain the degree of bachelor of arts or bachelor of science, 
if they successfully pursue a two years' graduate course in 
literature or science. The academic course, which con- 
tains Greek, is crowned with the degree of bachelor of arts, 



373] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS I5 

and graduates in this course may receive the degree of mas- 
ter of arts provided they afterwards pursue graduate studies 
for at least two years. The degree of bachelor of pedagogy 
or doctor of pedagogy may be conferred on any graduate in 
either of these courses who has made a study of the science 
and the art of teaching for a period of at least two years 
after graduation. Graduation from an approved high 
school, or an equivalent amount of education, is the educa- 
tional qualification for admission. 

One of the prominent institutions of this class is the 
New York state normal college at Albany. This institution 
is an outgrowth of the first New York normal school, founded 
in 1844, the reorganization taking place in 1890. It is a pro- 
fessional school exclusively, not duplicating the instruction 
given in literary colleges. The purely professional work in 
both courses, the English and classical, is the same, and 
graduates from both receive life certificate to teach in the 
public schools of the state ; graduates in the higher course 
also receive the degree of bachelor of pedagogy. Gradu- 
ates from fifty colleges and universities have sought instruc- 
tion in the college. 

The two oldest public normal schools of Illinois are called 
normal universities. The name, however, is purely historical, 
and has no educational significance whatever. 

The cities have followed the states in founding normal 
schools, often called, however, training schools. The prin- 
cipal reason for maintaining such schools is the urgent need 
for trained teachers for the local system of schools, which can- 
not be otherwise supplied. Other reasons, as the desire on 
the part of local authorities to round out the system with a 
professional school, and the wish of parents to have their 
daughters prepared for teaching, also exert some influence. 
Many of the public normal schools fall into this class. 
Nearly all the large cities, and many of the small ones, have 
their own independent schools. Greater New York has sev- 
eral of them. These schools commonly make graduation 
from the local high school, or an equivalent education, a 



1 6 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [374 

qualification for admission, and they graduate their students 
after a one year's or a two years' course. In 1895 the legis- 
lature of New York passed an act which authorizes the 
cities of the state and villages employing superintendents 
of schools, to establish and maintain one or more schools 
or classes for the professional instruction and training of 
teachers in the principles of education and in the method 
of instruction, for not less than thirty-eight weeks in each 
school year. Such schools receive assistance from the 
state funds ; the requirements for admission and the course 
of study are fixed by the state superintendent of public 
instruction, under whose general direction such schools are 
carried on ; graduation from an approved high school or 
academy has been made the test of admission. The results 
have been so encouraging that the superintendent pronounces 
the law the most important statute relating to its subject 
which has been enacted in any state in the union.' 

With the single exception of the Philadelphia model 
school, the first schools of the country to train teachers were 
private schools, created and carried on by their owners and 
managers, as means of livelihood and instruments of doing 
good. Nor has the establishment of public schools driven 
the private ones out of the field. On the contrary, the 
private schools have greatly increased in number, and have 
assumed the name normal. Some of them are the property 
of corporations, some of private owners. A few rival the 
public schools in number of students and teachers and in 
equipment. They are more numerous, but have not so large 
an aggregate attendance, as the accompanying statistics will 
show. 

The Peabody Normal college, Nashville, Tennessee, has a 
unique history among American schools for the training of 
teachers. It takes its name from the distinguished philan- 
thropist George Peabody, a name well known in both worlds, 
and derives the larger part of its support from the education 
fund that Mr. Peabody created in 1867-69, committing it to 

^ Report of the superintendent of public instruction, New York, 1898, vol. I, xxv. 



375] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 1 7 

a board of trust, with instructions to apply the income, at 
their discretion, for the promotion and encouragement of 
intellectual, moral, or industrial education among the young 
of the more destitute portions of the southern and south- 
western states of the American union. This board soon 
made choice of the preparation of teachers as the best means 
of carrying out the founder's wishes. In connection with 
the trustees of the university of Nashville, an old institution 
of learning that had fallen into decay, the board founded, in 
1875, the normal school, which has since expanded into the 
colleofe. The state of Tennessee has since come to the 
assistance of the two" boards of trustees. The general agent 
of the Peabody fund says of it : " Giving to all the southern 
states the benefit of improved normal instruction widened 
the college from a local state institution into a college for 
the south." And again : " In establishing the college there 
there was no Intent to favor Tennessee above other southern 
states. The training of teachers for all the southern states 
was the object. As the munificence of Mr. Peabody was 
the stimulus and the means for establishing systems of public 
schools in the states, so the normal college has pointed the 
way and aroused the effort for the organizing of more local 
but indispensable normal schools." ' The college is the 
literary department of the university of Nashville, and con- 
fers, In addition to the degree of licentiate of instruction, the 
usual degrees conferred by the literary and scientific colleges. 
The Peabody trustees, besides their other contributions to 
the support of the college, provide a liberal system of 
scholarships for the assistance of students who wish to pre- 
pare themselves for teaching. 

In the normal schools of the country women hold the same 
relative preponderance as students that they hold In the com- 
mon schools as teachers, as the statistics clearly show."" It 

^ A Brief sketch of George Peabody and a history of the Peabody education 
fund through thirty years, by J. L. M. Curry, Cambridge, 1898. 

* In 1896-97 the numbers of male and female teachers in the common schools of 
the country, as reported by the bureau of education, were as follows: Males, 
131,381 ; females, 271,949. 



1 8 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [376 

is interesting to observe, however, that they are far more 
numerous, relatively as well as absolutely, in the public nor- 
mal schools than in the private ones, which is owing, for the 
most part probably, to the fact that tuition is free in the one 
case and not in the other. 

Kindergarten teachers are frequently trained for their 
,work in normal schools, and occasionally manual training 
j teachers as well. Mention may be made in particular of the 
Chicago Kindergarten college, which aims to extend help to 
;kindergartners, primary teachers, mothers, or other persons 

intrusted with the education of little children. The work 
' . . , 
is distributed among seven different departments, of which 

the teachers' department stands first, followed immediately 
by the mothers' department. The teachers' department pro- 
vides both central and branch classes. The regular teachers' 
course is three years, the educational qualification for admis- 
sion to it being a high school education or its equivalent. 

Numerous and well attended as normal schools have 
become, they still come very far short of supplying the com- 
mon schools with a sufficient number of professionally 
trained teachers. In this connection it must be considered 
that a great army of teachers is required to carry on the 
common schools of the country, and that a great majority of 
this army serve for short periods. In 1896-97 the total 
number was 403,333, and it increases by an increment of 
many thousand every year. Assuming that ten per cent 
pass out of the service every year, which is a very moderate 
estimate, we see that more than 40,000 recruits are needed 
annually to keep the ranks full, to say nothing of meeting 
the growth of the country. But this number is more than 
three times the number of normal graduates in 1897-98, and 
more than one-half the total number of students in all the 
training schools and classes in the country. No state 
makes a better showing than Massachusetts ; but in 1897-98 
only 38.5 per cent of her teachers in public schools had 
received normal instruction, and only 33.5 per cent were 
normal graduates. Of those who had not received such 



377] 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 



19 



instruction, the secretary of the state board of education 
says a few have probably been appointed without reference 
to their fitness for their work ; some have had a little pre- 
liminary training in schools for the purpose ; some began to 
teach before normal preparation had attracted the attention 
of school committees that it has done in recent years, while 
some are college graduates.' Unfortunately, we do not 
possess the statistics that would enable us to make a similar 
showing for the whole country.^ 

STATISTICS OF NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES FOR 

1897-98* 



Number of normal schools 

Teachers instructing normal students 

Students in teachers' training courses 

Male students 

Female students 

Number normal graduates 

Male graduates 

Female graduates 

Volumes in libraries 

Value of buildings, grounds, apparatus.... 
Value of benefactions received in 1897-98. 

Total money value of endowment 

Appropriated by states, counties and cities 
for buildings and improvements, 1897-98. 

Appropriated by same for support 

Received from tuition and other fees 

Received from productive funds 

Received from other sources and unclassi- 
fied 

Total income for 1897-98 



Public normal 
schools 


Private normal 
schools 


Total 


167 


173 


345 


1,863 


1,008 


2,871 


46,245 


21,293 


67,538 


12,578 


10.597 


23,175 


33,667 


10,696 


44,363 


8,188 


3,067 


11,255 


1,543 


1,689 


3,232 


6,645 


1,378 


8,023 


566,684 


194,460 


761,144 


$19,98 J,222 


$5,047,507 


$25,027,729 


33^,185 


240,203 


576,388 


1,472,865 


2,311,594 


3,784,459 


417,866 




417,866 


2,566,132 


19,696 


2,585,828 


514,562 


648,459 


1,163,021 


57,648 


38,759 


96,407 


307,409 


191,995 


499,404 


3,445,751 


898,909 


4,344,660 



'Sixty-second annual report of the board of education, Massachusetts, 1897-98, 
p. 148. 

'President J. G. Schurman, of Cornell university, has calculated from data fur- 
nished by the report of the commissioner of education that in 1891-92 the total 
increase of teachers in the schools was less than two per cent, but that nearly 
seventeen per cent of the whole number of teachers were inexperienced beginners. 
Assuming that these per cents are typical, he infers that the average length of th6 
professional career of the American teacher is between seven and eight years. 
From data furnished by the same authority, he calculates that only fifteen per 
cent of the teachers then in the schools had passed through a normal school. — 
The Forum, Vol. XXI, pp. 174, 179. 

'This table is furnished by the commissioner of education in advance of its 
publication in his report for the year 1897-98. 



20 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [378 

Dr. W. T. Harris has shown that in the past seventeen 
years the enrollment in normal schools reported by states or 
cities has increased from about 10,000 to something over 
40,000. The attendance on normal schools formed and 
supported by private enterprise has increased from about 
2,000 to 24,000, though the increase has been very slow in 
the last three years. In 1880 there were 240 normal stu- 
dents in each million of inhabitants; in 1897 there were 976 
in each million.' 

The American normal schools answer, in general, to the 
normal schools of France and Italy, the training colleges of 
England, and the teachers' seminaries of Switzerland and 
Germany. They differ, however, from all these schools in 
important particulars. For instance, they offer at least 
three points of contrast to the German teachers' seminaries. 

First, in respect to the instruction furnished. While the 
German schools confine themselves exclusively to training 
intending teachers, including, to be sure, much academic 
instruction, American schools generally do a large amount 
of miscellaneous teaching. To a great extent they parallel 
the high schools and to some extent even the elementary 
schools. In the second place, this wide range of work 
accounts in part for the much greater size of the American 
schools. In 1888 only five of the 115 normal schools of 
Prussia had upwards of a hundred pupils, while one had 
less than fifty ; but several of our state schools count more 
than a thousand pupils. It must always be borne in mind 
that a large proportion of these America/i pupils are in no 
proper sense normal pupils. In the third place, there is nec- 
essarily a great disparity in the size of the respective facul- 
ties. An ordinary Prussian normal school requires but nine 
teachers, including the two in the practice school, while our 
normal school staffs often number fifty or more persons. 

It is clear, therefore, that we have not yet realized the 
pure normal school type as Germany, for example, has done. 
Nor can it be doubted that our schools as institutions for 

The Educational review, January, 1899, p. 8. 



379] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 21 

training teachers have often suffered greatly from their over- 
grown numbers and large classes. In Prussia, once more, 
the average number of pupils per teacher is not more than 
twelve. It is accordingly to be hoped that in the future we 
may realize the normal school idea in purer form than in the 
past' 

II teachers' training classes 

For the school year 1896-97 there reported to the Bureau 
of Education 1,487 institutions which enrolled 89,974 nor- 
mal students, or students pursuing courses designed for the 
professional training of teachers. Those students who were 
pursuing in these schools other courses of study are not 
included in this total. The following table will show how 
the students were distributed : 

Schools Number Students 

Public normal schools. 164 43,199 

Private normal schools 198 24,181 

Colleges and universities 196 6,489 

Public high schools 507 9,001 

Private high schools and academies 422 7,064 



Nothing need be added to what was said in the former 
division of this monograph concerning the normal schools. 

But the normal students, so called, in the colleges and 
universities are a less definite body of persons. The nor- 
mal work that many of them do does not differ in character 
from that done in the proper normal schools ; a smaller 
number are taking the strictly professional courses leading 

^ On normal schools in the United States, see the following authorities: Henry 
Barnard, Normal schools and other institutions, agencies, and means designed 
for the professional instruction of teachers, Hartford, 1851. J. P. Gordy, Rise 
and growth of the normal school idea in the United States, Washington, 1891. 
G. H. Martin, The Evolution of the Massachusetts system of public instruction, 
New York, 1894, Lecture IV. B. A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the comnron 
school period in the United States, New York, 1898, chapter VI. S. S. Randall, 
History of the common school system of the State of New York, New York, 1871, 
passim. J. P. Wickersham, History of education in Pennsylvania, etc., Lancaster, 
Pa., 1894, /aj-j-jw. A. P. Hollis, The contribution of the Oswego normal school 
to educational progress in the United States, Boston, 1898. Proceedings of the 
semi-centennial celebration of the state normal school at Framingham, 1889, 
particularly the oration delivered by Dr. W. T. Harris. 



22 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [S^O 

Up to the academic degrees, which will be explained in 
another place ; some are members of what may be called 
teachers' training: classes. The training: work done in the 
institutions of this class is of very different degrees of 
quality ; some of it, perhaps, amounting to nothing more 
than attendance upon one or two courses of lectures, while 
some of it is of strictly university grade. The statistics 
given under this head are the least value of all, partly on 
account of the facts just stated, and partly because the 
returns are not complete. 

The normal students in high schools and academies, more 
than 16,000 in number, are, generally speaking, in training 
classes. They may be divided into three groups. 

First, many of these students in the private schools, and 
no doubt some in the public ones, have had nothing more 
than a fair elementary education, if indeed some of them 
have had as much education as that. They are looking for- 
ward to teaching, most of them in the district schools, and 
have come into the high schools and academies where they 
are found to enlarge their knowledge of the branches that 
they expect to teach and to receive some professional instruc- 
tion in addition. 

Secondly, some instruction in the principles of education and 
its history is often made an elective study in the last year of 
the high school or academy course for those students who 
are looking forward to teaching. The elementary schools 
look for many of their teachers to the graduates of the 
high schools and academies, particularly the public high 
schools, and even the limited amount of training that 
they receive fits them in a measure for teaching. 

Thirdly, classes are sometimes formed in these schools 
consisting of graduates who wish, or are required, to fit them- 
selves more thoroughly for the teacher's work. Such classes 
do not differ from the city training schools, only they are 
less fully developed. They may be called rudimentary 
training schools. 

The training class is an old device for preparing elementary 



381] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 23 

teachers. Thus New York early sought to solve the teacher 
problem for the common schools by providing instruction 
for teachers in the academies of the state, under the man- 
agement of the regents of the university. This experiment 
did not prove to be as successful as had been hoped, and the 
state supplemented it by adopting the normal school policy. 
The earlier plan was never abandoned, however, but in 
1889 the supervision of training classes was transferred to 
the department of public instruction. In the year 1888-89 
sixty institutions were authorized to organize and to carry 
on such classes. In 1895 the legislature passed the law 
referred to under the last heading, which has put the train- 
ing classes on a new footing both as respects management 
and instruction. 

With a single exception the leading features of this act 
have already been given. The omitted feature is that no 
person shall be employed or licensed to teach in the ele- 
mentary schools of any city or village authorized by law to 
employ a superintendent of schools (that is, cities and vil- 
lages having 5,000 inhabitants or more) who has not taught 
successfully at least three years, or in lieu of such experience, 
graduated from a high school or other school of equal or 
higher rank, having a course of study of not less than 
three years approved by the state superintendent of pub- 
lic instruction, and subsequently received at least as much 
professional training as that furnished by one of these train- 
ing schools or classes ; local boards were left free to place 
their requirements as much higher as they see fit. 

The terms of admission to the training classes are the 
same as those for the training schools organized under the 
same law. The course of instruction embraces the leading 
common branches, the history of education, school manage- 
ment and school law, and the art of questioning. Instruc- 
tion in the school studies includes both subject-matter and 
method, together with some work in the observation and 
practice school. In his report for 1897-98, the state super- 
intendent says that in no branch of the work under his direc- 



'24 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [382 

tion have more gratifying results been secured than in the 
training classes. For that year there were organized eighty- 
three such classes, enrolling 1,278 students. The same year 
fourteen cities organized training schools under the law with 
an attendance of 523.' 

Ill teachers' institutes 

The teachers' institute, which is an original American 
institution for training teachers, has grown up side by side 
with the normal school. The commonly accepted account 
of its origin is that it dates from conventions of teachers 
held in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1839 ^^^ 1840, under the 
leadership of Dr. Henry Barnard. That it met a popular 
need is shown by its rapid spread. The first institute in 
New York, and the first anywhere to bear the name, was 
held in 1843 ; the first in Massachusetts and Ohio, 1845 ) 
the first in Michigan and Illinois, in 1846 ; the first in Wis- 
consin, in 1848, and the first in Iowa, the year following. 
The institute system soon embraced the whole northwest, 
and it was established in the south along with common 
schools after the civil war. 

At first the institute was a purely voluntary agency. 
There were no funds for its support, save such as the teach- 
ers attending and public-spirited citizens supplied. Often 
citizens showed such interest in the work that they freely 
opened their houses to receive the teachers, not as boarders 
but as guests. But such an instrument of power could not 
long remain outside the limits of the law. Massachusetts 
appropriated money for institutes in 1846; New York and 
Ohio, in 1847; Pennsylvania, in 1855. In course of time 
the institution was firmly imbedded in state school laws, and 
at present most of the states, if not all of them, give it some 
legal recognition and financial support. Tuition is free, 
unless, indeed, as is often the case, the teachers voluntarily 

' On teachers' training classes in the state of New York, see S. S. Randall, 
History of the common school system of the State of New York, N. Y., 1871, 
passim, and reports of the state superintendent of public instruction, 1889-90, 

and 1897-98, passim. 



383] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 2$ 

contribute out of their own pockets fees, in order to extend 
the length of the session or to provide better instruction 
than would otherwise be possible. 

Institutes are of numerous types, presenting such diver- 
gencies that it is difficult to define the species. There are 
state institutes and county institutes ; district, city, and town 
institutes. However, the best known type takes its name 
from the county, which is the civil division that, as a rule, 
furnishes the best unit of organization and management. 
This type alone presents many varying features. Some 
county institutes continue but a day or two ; some, several 
weeks. Som.e are conducted by state authorities, as the 
superintendent of public instruction or his assistants ; some 
by local authorities, as county superintendents, or officers of 
teachers' institute associations. Some are carried on much 
like a school, with text books, set lessons, and recitations, 
together with lectures ; some depend upon lectures alone. 
Some are graded with a view to securing instruction especially 
adapted to the different classes of teachers ; others are wholly 
unclassified and the attendants all receive the same instruc- 
tion. Sometimes two or more counties are thrown together 
in one district, it may be for a yed.r only, in order to secure, 
through the concentration of fands and influence, a longer 
term and better advantages. State institutes, which are 
infrequent, commonly look more to the needs and interests 
of the better teachers of the state. City institutes are con- 
ducted with special reference to local needs. 

Dr. Barnard called his conventions of teachers only as a 
temporary expedient. In his first circular announcing his 
purpose, he proposed to give those teachers an " opportu- 
nity to revise and extend their knowledge [i] of the studies 
usually pursued in district schools and [2] of the best methods 
of school arrangements, instruction and government under 
the recitations and lectures of experienced and well-known 
teachers and educators." On these two lines the institute 
has continued to move ; that is, it has combined, with fluctu- 
ating emphasis, the two ideas of general and special prepa- 



26 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [384 

ration for teachers. Commonly the revision and extension 
of studies comes through the instruction in methods, as 
instructors or lecturers draw freely upon subject-matter for 
the purpose of illustration ; but sometimes formal instruc- 
tion is given in the more difficult parts of the several sub- 
jects taught in the schools, as geography, grammar, history, 
and the like. The professional instruction relates to the 
science, the art, and the history of teaching, and school 
organization, management, and economy. Mention should 
be made, however, of what may be called the culture aspect 
of the institute — the lectures and other exercises that bring 
forward literary, historic, scientific, and other similar sub- 
jects. The institutes of the states taken together would 
furnish a wide range of instruction and culture. In those of 
Massachusetts for 1897-98, there were presented seventy- 
three distinct topics, which no doubt considerably overlapped. 

Putting all the facts together, we may give this definition 
of a teachers' institute : A school for teachers havino- a short 
and a vaguely defined course of study, and having as its 
main object the instruction of teachers, and particularly non- 
professional teachers, in the elements of their art and their 
stimulation to excellence in scholarship and teaching. 

The institutes are held in all seasons of the year, summer 
being, perhaps, the preferred time. In Pennsylvania and 
New York, in both of which states the work is well organ- 
ized, they come in the months October-December and 
March-May. 

So long as attendance was purely voluntary the results 
were gratifying but not satisfactory ; often, but not uni- 
versally, the principle of legal compulsion has therefore 
been invoked. In 1867 Pennsylvania passed a law requir- 
ing acting teachers to attend their respective institutes. 
A similar provision is in force in the state of New York. 
When attendance is compulsory, the teacher's salary goes 
on, the same as though she were on duty in the school 
room ; at least if the institute is held in the school term. 
In such cases the local school authorities are required to 



385] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 2/ 

close the schools, but when attendance is optional, they fol- 
low their own counsel in the matter. 

Statistics of teachers' institutes are not found in the recent 
annual reports of the Bureau of Education. For the year 
1886-87 the commissioner reported 2,003 institutes, with an 
enrolled attendance of 138,986 persons. It would not be 
wide of the mark, perhaps, to say that the annual attendance 
equals one-half the total number of teachers in the schools. 

Institute instruction is a more difficult art than class-room 
instruction. It combines the best elements of the lecture 
and the recitation. It is not surprising therefore that the 
institute has created a class of professional instructors or 
lecturers. The agents of the Massachusetts board of educa- 
tion devote much time to the institutes, while New York 
supports a special institute faculty. There has also appeared 
a class of lecturers, some with and some without other edu- 
cational connections, who move in much wider circles, visit- 
ing institutes in widely separated states. Still, taking the 
country together, the main reliance is upon men and women 
who are regularly engaged in school work, as superintend- 
ents, and principals of schools and professional teachers. Col- 
lege and normal school professors are also frequently drawn 
into the service. In fact, if the annals of the institute were 
written in full, they would contain the names of many of the 
most eminent scholars and teachers, men of letters and men 
of science, of the last sixty years. Instruction in the methods 
of the institute is often given in normal schools. 

The so-called summer institutes, extending over a period 
of from four to six weeks, which call together large numbers 
of enthusiastic teachers and very able corps of instructors, 
and which are becoming more common every year, do not 
differ materially from the summer schools soon to be men*- 
tioned, in character. They are, however, carried on under 
state auspices, while those schools are local or private 
enterprises. 

At first the institute was regarded as a merely temporary 
expedient : it has already continued sixty years. Again, 



28 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [386 

while It was called into existence only as a means of helping 
persons who were already engaged in teaching, it has, unfor- 
tunately, sometimes been made an agent for preparing intend- 
ing teachers for their work. Still, representative educators 
have never for a moment regarded it as a substitute for the 
school, either general or special. Pressed into a service for 
which it was never intended, it has been the source of some 
evil ; but the balance is overwhelmingly on the other side. 
It has been useful in ways that the founders did not antici- 
pate or fully anticipate. It has given teachers higher ideals 
of education and teaching, enlarged their acquaintance with 
educational men and with one another, created professional 
spirit, and generated enthusiasm. It has also been an impor- 
tant means of developing educational intelligence and. inter- 
est in society. Upon the whole, there is reason to think 
that the teachers' institute possesses lasting usefulness ; in 
other words, that it fills a place in our school economy that 
no other agent can fill, and that it will become one of our 
permanent educational institutions." 

IV THE SUMMER SCHOOL FOR TEACHERS 

In its more popular form, the summer school for teachers 
is a sort of cross between the normal school and the teach- 
ers' institute. Three types may be recognized. 

The first type to be mentioned is seen in the schools that 
form part of the summer assemblies sometimes called 
" Chautauquas," which combine popular entertainment, rec- 
reation and diversion, and social intercourse with serious 
instruction and ethical and relig-Ious culture. 

The next type is the familiar summer school, seen at the 
normal schools, colleges, and universities. Such schools 

'Authorities on teachers' institutes. — Henry Barnard, normal schools, etc., 
Hartford, 1851; The American journal of education, vol. Ill, p. 673, XIV, p. 253, 
XV, p. 276, 405, XXII, p. 557. J. H. Smart, Teachers' institutes, Washington, 
1887. S. S. Randall, History of the common school system of the state of New 
York, N. Y., iSji, passim. J. P. Wickersham, History of education in Pennsyl- 
vania, Lancaster, Pa., 1884, passim. James P. Milne, Teachers' institutes, Syra- 
cuse, N. Y., 1894. B. A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the common school revival 
in the United States, pp. 136-138. 



387] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 29 

have been stimulated by the example of Chicago university 
in offering to students regular summer terms. At some of 
the normal schools the summer school has already become 
a regular summer session ; moreover, there are indications 
that some of the colleges and universities will do the same 
thing ; in fact, the University of Wisconsin has already taken 
the step. 

Schools of the third type are organized and carried on at 
chosen seats by private individuals or by associations of 
individuals. These schools combine both business and edu- 
cational features. They are generally found at places offer- 
ing attractive features as summer resorts, and so offer to 
their patrons the combined attraction of an outing and a 
term of school. Perhaps the best known of all these insti- 
tutions Is that of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, founded 
in 1878 and chartered three years later. It is also called an 
institute. It has twenty academical departments, counts 
forty instructors on its staff, and enrolls annually five hun- 
dred students. In the twenty-one years of its history it has 
taught 9,000 or 10,000 persons. 

Irrespective of type these schools commonly offer to their 
patrons both general and special advantages ; In other 
words, they teach both academical and pedagogical subjects, 
and also introduce cultural elements of a considerably diver- 
sified character. While they offer attractions to other per- 
sons, and actually enroll some of them In their classes, the 
great functions of these schools is to fit teachers and Intend- 
ing teachers for their work. Their faculties contain many 
instructors and lecturers of marked ability and high stand- 
ing in the w^orld of letters, education, or science. All things 
considered, serious Instruction has not perhaps anywhere 
been offered to teachers in a more attractive form than in 
the best of these summer schools. These schools, no doubt, 
approach nearer than any other agencies for fitting teachers 
in the United States to the great summer meetings held for 
the same purpose at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.^ 

'Balfour Graham, The Educational systems of Great Britain and Ireland, 
Oxford, 1898, pp. 252, 253. 



30 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [388 



V UNIVERSITY EXTENSION COURSES 

University extension is an importation from England. 
Here, as there, the idea is to carry the university to the 
Student rather than to bring the student to the university. 
However, the " university " that is so carried is sometimes 
nothing more than a secondary school. The method involves 
a local center, a local committee of managers, local arrange- 
ments, including the guaranteeing of a certain sum of money, 
and an instructor. The university sends the instructor, who 
gives a course of lectures on a subject previously agreed 
upon ; a class follows each lecture, essays are prepared and 
corrected, and needed books are supplied. In its purity the 
method involves a final examination and the granting of 
certificates to deserving students. For some reason the 
results of university extension in the United States have 
been less satisfactory than in England. Ostensibly, the 
movement takes no account of teachers as teachers ; and the 
only reason for including it in this survey is the fact that 
teachers are generally very prominent on the local commit- 
tees and in attendance upon the classes. This fact has been 
recognized by the occasional presentation of instruction suit- 
able to their particular needs ; pedagogical courses are some- 
times met with on extension programs. 

VI teachers' reading circles 
The teachers' readinof circle movement is believed to have 
originated in Ohio. Mrs. D. L. Williams, a veteran teacher 
of that state, threw out the primal idea in a paper read 
before the State teachers' association in July, 1882. She 
said she had for many years entertained the theory that a 
course of reading, partly professional and partly general, 
and reaching through several years, might be instituted 
under the management of the association that would be of 
extreme value, particularly to young teachers, and added 
that since the Chautauqua literary course had proved such 
an eminent success, she had more confidence than ever in 



389] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 3 1 

the feasibility of the plan. The suggestion was immediately 
caught up by the association, steps being taken at once that 
led to the immediate organization of a course of readmg. 
The next year the Ohio teachers' reading circle was fully 
organized. The constitution embraced a board of control 
to conduct the general business in connection with the state 
association, a course of professional and literary reading, the 
issuing of certificates of progress to the members, and the 
granting of diplomas upon the completion of the course, 
which was to extend over four years. In 1884 a member- 
ship of more than 2,000 was reported, and in 1887 the first 
class was graduated.' 

Such was the beginning of a movement that has extended 
to many states of the Union. Naturally enough, the results 
that have been obtained in different states and communities 
vary considerably in respect to efficiency and value. It is 
generally conceded, however, that the Indiana circle has 
been conducted quite as successfully as any other of the 
state circles, if not indeed more successfully than any other, 
and this fact will be a sufficient justification for some 
remarks of a more specific character. 

This circle, which was organized in December, 1883, 
derives its constitution from the State teachers' association. 
The executive management is placed in the hands of a board 
of directors, one of whom is the state superintendent of 
public instruction ; of the six other members, one must be a 
county superintendent, one a city superintendent, and four 
practical teachers, all elected by the state association for a 
term of three years. It is the duty of the board to plan a 
course of reading from year to year to be pursued by the 
public school teachers of the state ; to select the books to be 
read ; to provide for examinations on the courses, and to ' 
prepare questions for the same ; to issue certificates to such 
teachers as pass the annual examination satisfactorily, and 
to issue diplomas to such teachers as pass the examination 

'The Ohio educational monthly, August, 1882, pp. 316, 323; August, 1883, 
PP- 307. 308, 309. 



32 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [39O 

for four successive years. The board reports to the state 
association at its annual meeting. The annual membership 
is about fifteen thousand, twelve thousand teachers and 
three thousand intending teachers. 

The Indiana teachers' reading circle has been a powerful 
influence in the education of the state. Several circum- 
stances have contributed to its success. One of these has 
been the wise management of the board of directors, which 
has uniformly commanded the respect and confidence of 
teachers. The circle has been strengthened by the official 
recognition of its work by the state board of education. 
This the board does by accepting the examinations of the 
reading circle in literature and the science of teaching in 
lieu of examinations in those subjects by the regular exam- 
ining authorities. The character of the reading that is done 
can best be shown by transcribing the list of books from the 
beginning. 

1884-85 — ^ Brooks' Mental Science; Barnes' General History; 

Parker's Talks on Teaching. 
1885-86 — Brooks' Mental Science; Smith's English Literature; 

Hewitt's Pedagogy. 
1886-87 — Hailman's Lectures on Education; Green's History of 

the English People; Watts on the Mind. 
1887-88 — Lights of Two Centuries; Sully's Handbook of 

Psychology. 
1888-89 — Compayre''s History of Education; The Marble Faun ; 

Heroes and Hero Worship. 
1889-90 — Compayre's Lecture on Teaching; Steele's Popular 

Zoology. 
1890-91 — Wood's How to Study Plants; Boone's Education in 

the United States ; with review of previous psycho- 
logical studies. 
1891—92 — Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching; Hawthorne's 

Studies in American Literature. 
1892-93 — Fiske's Civil Government in the United States; 

Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 
1893-94 — DeGarmo's Essentials of Method; Orations of Burke 

and Webster. 
1894-95 — Tompkins' Philosophy of Teaching ; Select Letters and 

Essays of Ruskin. 



39 1] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 33 

1895-96 — McMurry's General Method; Studies in Shakespeare. 
1896-97 — Guizot's History of Civilization; Tompkins' Literary 

Interpretations. 
1897-98 — Bryan's Plato the Teacher; Hinsdale's Teaching the 

Language-Arts. 
1898-99 — Henderson's Social Elements ; Bryan's Plato's Republic. 

The Indiana circle embraces no important feature that 
is not found in other states ; such special prominence as 
it enjoys is due solely to good organization and wise 
management.^ 

It must not be supposed that where this work is carried 
on efficiently it is left solely to teachers in their individual 
capacity ; on the other hand, local classes or circles are 
formed, with prescribed reading for prescribed periods, which 
hold frequent meetings, conducted by a local leader, often 
the superintendent' of schools. Enterprising educational 
journals contribute their help to the work by publishing in 
their successive issues articles that elucidate the books to be 
read. 

The future of the teachers' reading circle is not, perhaps, 
fully assured. It is conceded that it has done much good in 
arousing interest in the better culture of teachers, in organ- 
izing courses of reading and study, and.-in giving the whole 
work unity and consistent direction. Still, the question is 
sometimes asked whether it would not now be better to leave 
the whole matter to local initiative and direction, or to 
entrust the powers now exercised by the state board of con- 
trol or directors to local superintendents and their advisers. 
There is good reason to think that the answers which are 
given to this question are influenced not a little by the char- 
acter of the work that has been done in the communities or 
states from which the answers come. 

VI CHAIRS OF EDUCATION IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES 

The growing interest in training teachers was not long in 
reaching the colleges and universities. The effect was first 

* Report of the superintendent of public instruction of the state of Indiana, 

1898, pp. 449-462. 



34 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [392 

seen in the academical sphere, but It soon declared Itself In 
the professional sphere. 

A course of Instruction in the science of teaching was one 
of the features of the " new system " that President Way- 
land sought to establish at Brown university in 1850, but that 
system was not permanently successful owing to lack of the 
necessary funds to support it, Horace Mann caused the 
study of the theory and practice of teaching to be made a 
part of the regular course in Antioch college, Ohio, on the 
opening of that Institution In 1853, but as an elective study. 
From 1856 to 1873 a normal school formed a department of 
the University of Iowa, and was then incorporated Into the 
institution as a chair of didactics. In 1867 the legislature 
of Missouri authorized and required the curators of the State 
university to establish a professorship in that institution, to be 
devoted to the theory and practice of teaching and to call 
some suitable person to discharge Its duties. The chair 
does not appear, however, to have been firmly established, 
although some instruction was given for several years in the 
subject, until 1891. 

But it was at the University of Michigan that the teach- 
ing of education In an American college or university was 
first put on a solid basis. In 1874 President Angell, of that 
institution, incorporated the following paragraph in his 
annual report to the board of regents : 

" It cannot be doubted that some instruction In pedagog- 
ics would be very helpful to our senior class. Many of 
them are called directly from the university to the manage- 
ment of large schools, some of them to the superintendency 
of the schools of a town. The whole work of organizing 
schools, the management of primary and grammar schools, 
the art of teaching and governing a school, — of all this It 
is desirable that they know something before they go to 
their new duties. Experience alone can thoroughly train 
them. But some familiar lectures would be of essential 
service to them." 

In June, 1879, the regents, on the recommendation of the 



393] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 35 

president and faculty, established a chair of the science and 
the art of teaching, the objects of which were declared to be 
five in number : To fit university students for the higher 
positions in the public school service ; to promote educa- 
tional science ; to teach the history of education and of edu- 
cational doctrine ; to secure to teaching the rights, preroga- 
tives, and advantages of a profession ; to give a more perfect 
unity to the state educational system by bringing the secon- 
dary schools into closer relation with the university. At the 
time the Bell chairs of education in the Universities of 
Edinburgh and St. Andrews were the only similar ones in 
English speaking countries. 

At first only two courses of instruction were offered : A 
practical course, embracing school supervision, grading, 
courses of study, examinations, the art of instructing and 
governing, school architecture, school hygiene, school law, 
etc. ; and an historical, philosophical, and critical course, 
embracing the history of education, the comparison and 
criticism of the systems of different countries, the outlines 
of educational science, the science of teaching, and the criti- 
cal discussion of theories and methods. Two lectures a 
week were given in each course. Before this time, how- 
ever, the university had given to students, on their passing 
examinations in certain subjects, a teacher's diploma, which 
was, however, merely a certificate to the student's compe- 
tency to teach those subjects. One of the two courses in 
education was now added to the requirements for this 
diploma. The field of instruction has continued to broaden 
and the courses to differentiate, until, in the year 1 889-1 900 
ten different courses are offered, viz. : One in the art and 
one in the science of teaching ; one in school supervision 
and one in the comparative study of educational system's; 
one in child study and one in the sociological aspects of 
education ; and four in the various phases of the history 
of education. The total amount of work offered, given in 
one semester, now amounts to twenty-four hours. 

Besides these courses in education, teachers' courses are 



36 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [394 

offered in several departments of the university, as Greek, 
Latin, German, mathematics, history, etc. These courses 
are of two types, their character being sometimes deter- 
mined by subject matter alone, but sometimes by the 
method of presentation together with the subject matter. 
In the first case, the professor gives merely a course that 
he thinks the intending teacher should have, properly to 
qualify him to teach the subject ; in the second case, the 
professor also seeks to present, or at least to illustrate, the 
method of teaching the subject in the school, commonly 
dwelling more or less upon the peculiar difficulties that it 
presents/ 

This somewhat extended account of what has been accom- 
plished at the University of Michigan will not be thought 
out of place, when it is remembered that the example thus 
set has proved to be stimulating to other institutions of 
learning. The same original causes that acted in Michigan 
have also acted in other states. Since 1879 numerous chairs 
of education have been established in colleges and universi- 
ties, and additional chairs are being founded every year. 
Education has come to be recognized as a fit, if not, indeed, 
a necessary subject of college and university instruction. 
Along this line of educational development the state univer- 
sities of the northwestern and western states have been the 
pioneers, owing in great part to the fact that these universi- 
ties are organic parts of state school systems, and in part to 
the fact that these sections of the country take kindly to 
new educational ideas. 

The courses offered by these chairs or departments of edu- 
cation are purely elective ; they count towards the student's 
degree the same as courses in philosophy, history, or politi- 
cal economy. The theory is that courses in education are 
just as informing and disciplinary to the student as courses 

'Contributions to the science of education. By William H. Payne, New York, 
1886. Chap. XV, " Education as a university study," and Appendix, " The Study 
of education in the university of Michigan." "Study of education at the uni- 
versity of Michigan," B. A. Hinsdale, in The Edticational review, vol. VI. 



395] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 3/ 

in cognate subjects. Not unfrequently, the institution gives 
a teacher's diploma to the student who complies with certain 
requirements. At the University of Michigan these require- 
ments are the following : A university degree, eleven hours 
of work in the department of the science and the art of 
teaching, and a teacher's course in some other department 
of the university. Not unfrequently, too, this diploma, 
either directly or indirectly, is legally valid as a certificate to 
teach in the public schools of the state. 

At different institutions the pedagogical work, while con- 
forming to a common type, has naturally been developed in 
somewhat different directions. What is more, the services 
of a single professor have not always proved to be sufficient 
to do all the work that is called for ; but this phase of the 
subject may perhaps be treated to better advantage under 
the next division of the general subject. 

VII teachers' colleges 
Three hundred years ago Richard Mulcaster, master of 
Merchant tailors' school, London, proposed a teachers' col- 
lege as a department of a university. " I conclude, there- 
fore," he said, " that this trade requireth a particular college, 
for these four causes. First, for the subject, being the mean 
to make or mar the whole fry of our state. Secondly, for 
the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of them 
that are to teach. Thirdly, for the necessity of the profes- 
sion, which may not be spared. Fourthly, for the matter of 
their study, which is comparable to the greatest possessions, 
for language, for judgment, for skill how to train, for variety 
in all points of learning, wherein the framing of the mind 
and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite considera- 
tion, besides the staidness of the person." "^ This good see^, 
however, fell into barren soil. Prof. S. S. Laurie renewed 
the suggestion in a somewhat different form in the address 
that he delivered in 1876 on assuming the duties of the 

' Positions wherein those primitive circumstances be examined which are neces- 
sary for the training of children, etc. London, 1851, chap. xli. 



38 THE TRAINING OF TEACHEE5 [396 

chair of the theory, history, and art of education in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. Vindicating the establishment of this 
chair, he said : " It makes it possible to institute for the first 
time in our universities a faculty of education, just as we 
may be said already to have a faculty of law, theology and 
of engineering." ' No foreign country has yet taken steps 
in this direction, and it has been left to the United States 
first to realize the suggestion of a faculty of education, or, 
more accurately perhaps, of a college for teachers. 

Instruction in the science and the art of teaching was 
included in the university scheme that was proposed for , 
Columbia college in 1858, but then without avail. Again, 
President Barnard urged the same plan, which he now 
worked out much more fully, upon the trustees of the same 
college in 1881 and 1882. The next step forward was the 
organization in New York city, in 1888, of Teachers college, 
which was chartered the following year. While this college 
was organized outside of the Columbia system, it was still 
under the control, in great part, of Columbia men, and was 
loosely afifiliated with the college. The last step in the evo- 
lution camie in 1898, when Teachers college was made an 
integral part of the educational system of Columbia uni- 
versity.^ The president of Columbia is president also of 
the college, and the university professors of philosophy and 
education and of psychology are members of its faculty, 
while the college is represented in the university council 
by its dean and an elected representative. The college, 
however, continues its own separate organization, having its 
own independent board of trustees, which is charged with 
the sole financial responsibility of its management. 

Teachers college is the professional school of Columbia 
university for the study of education and the training of 
teachers, ranking with the schools of law, medicine, and 

' The Training of teachers, etc., London, 1882. See inaugural address delivered 
on the occasion of the founding of the chair of the institutes and history of edu- 
cation in the University of Edinburgh, S. S. Laurie. 

* See an Article " The Beginnings of Teachers College," by Dr. Nicholas Murray 
Butler, in Columbia university quarterly, September, 1899. 



397] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 39 

applied science. The university accepts courses in education 
as part of the requirement for the degrees of A. B., A. M., 
and Ph. D. ; while graduate students who prefer to devote 
their entire time to professional study may become candi- 
dates for the higher diploma of the college. The college 
diploma is conferred upon students who have successfully 
completed some one of the general courses, and a depart- 
mental diploma upon those who have fitted themselves for 
particular branches of school work. Undergraduate students 
of Columbia and Barnard colleges may, if they desire, obtain 
the diploma of Teachers college at the same time that they 
receive the degree of bachelor of arts. The Horace Mann 
school, fully equipped with kindergarten, elementary, and 
secondary classes, is maintained by Teachers college as a 
school of observation and practice. 

These are the undergraduate courses : Secondary course 
leading to the degree of A. B. and the college diploma ; 
general course leading to the college diploma in elementary 
teaching ; general course leading to the college diploma in 
kindergarten teaching. Then there are several courses lead- 
ing to the college diploma in art, domestic art, domestic 
science, and manual training. Candidates for the first of 
these courses must be either college graduates or candidates 
for the degree of A. B. in Columbia university. There is a 
combined course of study prescribed for the degree of A. B. 
in Columbia university and the diploma of Teachers col- 
lege ; but particulars must here be omitted. Graduate 
work is also well developed. For the year 1898-99 the 
teaching staff counted more than sixty persons. 

New York university school of pedagogy, established in 
1890, aims to furnish graduate work equal in range to other 
professional schools. The school is an organic part of the 
university, having its own dean and faculty. More definitely, 
its aim is declared to be to furnish thorough and complete 
professional training for teachers. The plan of the school 
places it upon the same basis as that of the best schools of 
law, medicine, and theology. The work is of distinctively 



40 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [398 

university grade, and graduates of colleges and normal 
schools, and others of equal experience and maturity, may 
find in this school opportunity for the thorough study of 
higher pedagogy. In 1898-9, the instruction was distrib- 
uted in four major and eight minor courses, viz. : History 
of education ; physiological and experimental psychology ; 
analytical psychology ; history of philosophy ; physiological 
pedagogics ; elements of pedagogy ; comparative study of 
national school systems ; aesthetics in relation to education ; 
sociology in relation to education ; institutes of pedagogy ; 
ethics, school organization, management, and administra- 
tion. Special facilities for research are offered in the semi- 
naries. The degree of master of pedagogy is conferred 
upon candidates who have completed five of the foregoing 
courses, three of them majors ; the degree of doctor of 
pedagogy, upon candidates who have completed the four 
major and live of the minor courses. The school does not 
attempt undergraduate work. There is no practice teach- 
ing, but opportunity is given for the critical observation of 
selected schools. The staff includes ten persons. 

Clark university, opened in 1889, has given much atten- 
tion to education from the first, and the subject has now 
been made a sub-department in the department of psy- 
chology, in which a minor may be taken for the degree of 
doctor of philosophy. The work is intended to meet the 
needs of those intending to teach some other specialty 
than education but who wish a general survey of the his- 
tory, present state, methods, and recent advances in the 
field of university, professional, and technical education, 
and of those who desire to become professors of pedagogy, 
or heads of instruction in normal schools, superintendents, 
or to become professional experts in the work of education. 
The program for the year 1899 included (i) child study, edu- 
cational psychology, and school hygiene ; (2) principles of 
education, history of education and reforms, methods, devices, 
apparatus, etc. ; (3) organization of schools in different 
countries, typical schools and special foundations, motor 



399] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 4I 

education,' including manual training, physical education, 
etc., moral education, and ideals. Great stress is placed on 
original investigation. The president. Dr. G. Stanley Hall, 
has been from the first the leader of the child study move- 
ment in the United States. "The Pedagogical Seminary," 
edited by him, is the organ of the educational department of 
the university. It is an international record of educational 
research and literature, institutions and progress, and is 
devoted to the highest interests of education of all grades. 
One of its most valuable features is its digests of meritorious 
contributions to educational literature. 

The department of pedagogy in the University of Chicago 
has as its primary aim to train competent specialists for the 
broad and scientific treatment of educational problems. 
The courses fall under three heads : Psychology and related 
work, educational theory, and the best methods of teaching 
the various branches. Stress is laid upon the relation of 
pedagogy to other subjects, and courses are offered in the 
proper departments in which the methodology of such sub- 
jects is employed. For the year 1898-99 such courses were 
offered in history, sociology, and anthropology, in the Eng- 
lish, German, and Latin languages and literatures, in mathe- 
matics, and in geology. The courses in educational theory 
are preceded by the introductory courses in psychology, 
ethics, and logic, given in the department of philosophy. 

The University of Chicago has also established a college 
for teachers on a somewhat novel plan. This institution, 
which was founded in October, 1898, is an outgrowth of the 
class study department of the extension division of the uni- 
versity. It is a " downtown " college, and aims to provide 
instruction of high grade for busy people ; or, more defi- 
nitely, " for any and all persons qualified to do the work; 
who are so engaged by other imperative duties as to make 
continuous attendance at the other colleges of the university 
impracticable." ' The work of the new college is of the same 

^ " The Uniyersitj of Chicago College for Teachers," in University record, 
vol. Ill, No. 31. 



42 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [4OO 

grade as that of the other colleges of the university. Stu- 
dents may take much or little, according to their ability and 
wishes, but when the requirements have been met, the work 
is crowned with a degree. The school aims at scientific, 
cultural, and disciplinary results. It distinctly denies that it 
is in any sense a normal school. Moreover, while it is not 
exclusively a teachers' school, the college, nevertheless, 
emphasizes instruction suitable to the special needs of teach- 
ers sufficiently to justify its name. The distinctively peda- 
gogical teaching, like all the teaching, looks to knowledge 
and scientific training rather than to practical applications. 
At the close of its first year of life the outlook is an encour- 
aging one. 

The University of Wisconsin school of education is an 
expansion of the former department of education. The four 
main lines of instruction are the history, the philosophy, the 
science, and the practice of education. The school aims to 
afford practical and healthful instruction to intending teach- 
ers, professors, principals, and superintendents, and to those 
students who desire to pursue studies and investigations in 
the science of education. 

A wealthy and public-spirited lady of Chicago, Mrs. 
Emmons Blaine, has declared her purpose to establish and 
endow a teachers' college of high grade in that city, and the 
initial steps have already been taken to carry out her plan. 

The institution will be under the direction of Francis W. 
Parker, formerly of the Chicago Normal School. 

Besides the agencies for the training and cultivation of 
teachers that have been enumerated, there are still others 
that may be described collectively as miscellaneous in their 
character. Particular reference may be made to the numer- 
ous associations, societies, institutes, and clubs for teachers 
of various degree that overspread the' land. No other 
country in the world, it is probable, is so well furnished with 
these purely voluntary means of education. They con- 
tribute not a little to the knowledge and cultivation of 



40l] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 43 

teachers as well as to the elevation of educational ideals and 
the formation of popular opinion. Then there are the 
teachers' libraries, local and general. The organization of 
such libraries has sometimes been carried to such perfection 
that books of both a special and a general character are 
practically sent to the teacher's own door. New York, for 
instance, provides at state cost for the necessary expenses 
of a state school library for the benefit and free use of the 
teachers of the state, to be circulated under such rules and 
regulations as the state superintendent may establish. This 
law puts at the use of the teachers of the state an excellent 
collection of books on the simple and easy condition that 
they shall pay the postage on their return to the state capital. 
The certification or licensing of teachers in the public 
schools of the United States may almost be called a burning 
question. To protect the schools or the public against 
unworthy persons without burdening deserving teachers, is 
the problem to be solved. Much of the difficulty attending 
the solution of the problem arises from the highly complex 
form of the American government, and the emphasis that is 
everywhere placed upon local as opposed to central authority. 
Education is a state, not a national function ; moreover, the 
states, in accordance with the popular genius, vest this power 
primarily in local authorities, sometimes town or city boards, 
but more frequently county boards of examiners. In recent 
years many of the states have set up state examining boards, 
empowered to issue state certificates valid either for life or 
for a term of years. None of the states, however, have 
abandoned the earlier local boards, which still examine the 
great majority of school teachers. In Massachusetts, which 
is one of the states that have never adopted the new plan, 
there are three hundred and thirty-three boards authorized 
to grant certificates, not one of which, however, is legally 
valid beyond the town or city in which it is issued. Many 
teachers, and these generally the best teachers, naturally 
look upon the existing system as being unreasonable and 
burdensome, and insist that a wider validity shall be given 



44 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [402 

to their certificates when they have once proved their ability 
to teach. Sometimes the evils of the system are mitigated 
and the system so rendered less intolerable through the legal 
or practical recognition of the principle of comity, whereby 
the attestation of one examining authority is accepted by 
other such authorities. Still no satisfactory solution has 
yet been reached. 

At a meeting of college and university professors of educa- 
tion held in Washington, D. C, in July, 1898, a committee 
was appointed to investigate and report upon the certifica- 
tion of college and university graduates as teachers in the 
public schools. This committee has finished its work and 
published its report, which consists, in part, of an exposition 
of the existing laws and usages so far as the certification 
of such graduates is concerned, and in part of the recom- 
mendations of the committee. It will be germane to the 
subject of this monograph to include in it the salient features 
of this report. 

The committee declares unqualifiedly in favor of the states' 
making special legal provision for certificating college and 
university graduates in the public schools, whereby they 
shall be exempted, as far as may prove to be consistent with 
the best interests of the schools, from the ordinary examina- 
tions. This exemption should be made only in the cases 
of graduates who have complied substantially with the fol- 
lowing requirements : 

(i) The graduate shall have received a good college edu- 
cation terminating in a bachelor's degree. (2) He must, 
also, have pursued a limited number of studies, not more 
than two or three, of a congruous nature with more than 
ordinary thoroughness — that is, have had a degree of 
specialization. (3) His certificate should not cover all the 
studies of the high school course, but only those to which 
he has devoted special attention, as just explained. (4) The 
next condition is that the graduate shall have pursued, in 
the college or university, or in some school having college 
or university affiliations, the study of education. (5) He 



•tiOo 



403] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 45 

should also take one or more teachers' courses in the branches 
of knowledge which he has studied most thoroughly, such 
courses to include not merely the academical elements of the 
subject, but also its pedagogical elements. (6) The com- 
mittee also recommend that the candidate shall, if possible, 
have had some instruction in the school of observation or 
practice. The final conclusion is that the college or uni- 
versity graduate who has fulfilled these conditions and who 
has good health, good morals, and good personal cultivation 
should, without examination external to the college or uni- 
versity, be certificated to teach for a period of at least three 
years ; and if at the close of this probationary term he has 
shown himself to be a successful teacher, then he should be 
certificated for life, provided he expects to continue in the 
work. In the case of graduate students the committee urges 
that they also should be certificated without formal exami- 
nation if they make education either a major or minor study 
and also take one or more teachers' courses as in the case of 
the ordinary graduate. 

Perhaps the most important paragraph of the report relates 
to the study of education, and may be thus summarized : 
This study should be elective, and should count towards a 
student's degree as other elective work counts ; education, as 
a study, is just as informing and disciplinary as history, phil- 
osophy, sociology, or politics ; the minimum to be required 
should be about twelve hours a week for one semester. It 
should begin in the second semester of the junior year, 
or not later than the first semester of the senior year, and 
continue to the end of the course. Part of the work should 
be prescribed and part elective ; the prescribed work to 
include one scientific and one practical course. The scien- 
tific course should be built up on the basis of some knowl- 
edge of physiology, psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, and 
sociology, and should present an outline view of the facts 
and principles of education ; the practical course should 
embrace general methodoiog}*, some leading special metho- 
dologies, as the language-arts, history, science, school 



46 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [404 

hygiene, school practice, and management, the common facts 
of school law, the general features of an American state 
school system, etc. The electives would naturally be made 
from a group of subsidiary courses bearing some of the fol- 
lowing titles : The history of education in its various phases ; 
a comparative study of educational systems ; study of chil- 
dren ; the sociological relations of education ; the relations 
of pedagogy to other sciences and arts ; school superintend- 
ence ; the history of school studies and their value as edu- 
cational instruments, etc. The particular election or elec- 
tions would depend on the student, his preparation and his 
plans for the future.' 

At present this is an ideal scheme, although most of its 
features are met with in different institutions ; but it does 
not seem extravagant to expect that it will influence future 
practice. It may be added that the committee thinks that the 
realization of inter-state comity on a large scale must depend 
upon the improvement and elevation of existing standards. 

It is not altogether easy to conceive the enormous growth 
that education has made in the United States since the 
beginning of the educational revival. Unfortunately, we 
have no statistics that exhibit it on a national scale. We 
shall, however, close the century with an annual common 
school expenditure of more than $212,000,000, with more 
than 426,000 teachers, and with more than 15,500,000 pupils 
in the schools. There is no question as to the greatest 
defect of this education. We must accept in good spirit the 
judgment of the German critic, Dr. E. Schlee, delivered the 
year of the Columbian exposition.^ " If in every office the 
chief factor is the man, and in school the teacher, we have 
come to the weakest point in the American school system — 
professional teachers are wanting. That is to say, most 
teachers are deficient in the requisite scientific and peda- 
gogical preparation for their vocation." But it must be 
remembered that this great system is the work of but sixty 

' The report is found in the School review, Chicago, J une, i8gg. 
''Report of commissioner of education, 1892-93. Part II, chap. III. 



405] , THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 47 

years. It has been impossible to train teachers as fast as 
the schools required them ; the need has constantly outrun 
the public ability, and still more, perhaps, the public ideals. 
Under the circumstances, no people could have made the 
supply equal the demand. Still, much has been done to 
prepare teachers for their work, if not as much as should 
have been done. The agencies that have been employed, 
and are still employed, are of a miscellaneous character, 
evincing plainly enough the versatility, not to say shiftiness, 
of the American mind. The system is marked perhaps by 
what John Stuart Mill once called "the fatal belief" of the 
American public " that anybody is fit for anything." The 
national inventiveness appears particularly in the efforts that 
have been made to supply the deficiencies of non-professional 
teachers. The success that has attended these efforts has 
tended to produce satisfaction with mere temporary expe- 
dients. Necessity has been the mother of inventions that 
continued after the necessity had ceased. The fundamental 
lack is education — solid, sound, thorough education. Of 
agencies that minister to discursive culture, we have more 
than enough. Still, what is said above of teachers' institutes 
may be said of these agencies taken together — they have 
done far more good than evil. 

Our system undoubtedly appears very imperfect and inade- 
quate to foreign critics who are acquainted with the more 
highly organized systems of France and Germany ; but it is 
not invidious to say that such critics are not always well pre- 
pared to appreciate all the features of our civilization. In 
the present instance, they may safely accept our assurance 
that, however impossible our system might be in continental 
countries, in America it works much better than they can 
readily conceive. This is not said to conceal defects, which 
are freely admitted, but only to secure recognition for unde- 
niable merits. Whether new features will be added to the 
system, or whether old ones will be lopped away, are ques- 
tions that the future must answer. For the present, it is 
reassuring to know that the conviction is constantly gaining 



48 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS [406 

ground that, whatever is done at its circumference, the system 
must be strengthened at its center. The most competent 
judges will not dissent from the proposition, that the bright- 
est promise of the future is seen in the work, present and 
prospective, of the colleges and universities of the country. 

At the close of this monograph, it may not be amiss to 
remark that it presents only a general survey of its subject. 
All classes of institutions that deserve recognition have, it is 
believed, been characterized ; but the characterizations have 
necessarily been brief. In selecting the institutions that 
have been specifically named, the sole purpose has been to 
select those that are typical of their classes. The further 
observation may be added that, of the 436 universities and 
colleges reporting to the commissioner of education tech- 
nical, professional, and special courses of study for the year 
1896-97, 220 reported courses in pedagogy. 

Additional authorities — An historical account of the State 
Normal College at Albany, N. Y., etc. ; Circular of the New 
New York State Normal College, Albany, 1899; Columbia 
University in the city of New York, Teachers college, 
announcements, 1898-99, and 1899-1900, and President's 
Report, 1898-99; Columbia University in the city of New 
York, Division of Philosophy and Psychology, announce- 
ment, 1898-99; New York University, School of Pedagogy, 
announcements for the tenth year, beginning Sept. 27, 
1899, etc. ; The School of Pedagogy, New York University, 
its aims and opportunities to pupils ; Manual of the Normal 
College of the city of New York 1897 ; Twenty-eighth annual 
report of the Normal College of New York, for the year 
ending December 30, 1898, etc. ; Courses of study and rules 
for the government of training school for teachers, Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., 1897 ; John Fulton, Memoirs of Frederick A. P. 
Barnard, etc.. New York, 1896, chap. XVII ; Martha's 
Vineyard Summer Institute, 1899, Twenty-second annual 
session ; Clark University, etc., Register and eleventh 
official announcement, 1899; University of Wisconsin, 



407] THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 49 

announcement, of summer session for 1899; same, Bulletin 
No. 29, etc., 1899-1900; Historical sketch of the State 
university of Iowa, J. L. Pickard, etc., 1899; Catalogue of 
the Peabody normal college for the year 1898-99. 



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